AMD Radeon HD 7990 6GB Still in the Works, German Gamers to See it First

Over the past couple of months, we saw quite a lot of things happening with the New Zealand board (HD 7990 6GB). After looking at technical drawings and the initial design decisions, AMD's New Zealand board has quite interesting design choices.

While AMD was first out the door with the 28nm silicon "Tahiti XT" powering the Radeon HD 7970 3GB, NVIDIA was first out the door with the dual-GPU product, dubbed GeForce GTX 690 (as well as the high-performing part, the Tesla K10). At the same time, AMD showed its dual-GPU card codenamed "New Zealand" in multiple roadmaps and ultimately, the board was shown in flesh during the AMD Fusion Developer Summit in Bellevue, WA.

According to information we obtained, AMD communicated to its partners that the boards will be ready in the third quarter of this year, with the alleged sampling date being June, then slipping to July etc. The latest information comes from confidential sources who told us that the boards will come in late August the earliest.

First and foremost, the prototype board comes with a very unusual power system – four 6-pin PCIe connectors replace the double 8-pin connector which we became accustomed to with the previous generation parts. Those four 6-pin connectors lead to a multiphase power regulation, divided into three groups. The major groups consist out of Tahiti XT (not the XT2, i.e. the GHz Edition), 3GB GDDR5 memory per core (clocked at 1.5GHz) and the PLX PCIe 3.0 controller.

Furthermore, the six display outputs make a return. For the first time since the 5870 Eyefinity6 Edition, AMD's reference design carries six physical display outputs with four mini-DisplayPort and two DVI links. Just like the previous Southern Islands GCN parts, the 7990 will support PCIe 3.0 and daisy chaining the Full HD displays using a DisplayPort breakout box (MST Hub).

Price-wise, the part will replace the HD6990 at the top and will offer better pricing that the GeForce GTX 690. But for that, we'll have to wait for GamesCon in Cologne, Germany in Mid-August.

SGCafe.com

The Tokyo Anime Award Festival celebrates the anime industry, and is basically considered the Oscars for animation in Japan. In fact, many in Japan consider their Anime of the Year award as the highest honor in the industry. As usual, they announced two winners for Anime of the Year, along with a Fan Award. Here...